As an alternative to sending survey crews to physically inspect land parcels, many forest management companies and other landholders are utilizing remotely sensed images such as, satellite or other aerial images of one or more regions of interest to inspect such land holdings. The aerial images can be analyzed to manage the growth or harvesting of trees or crops in the area, to inspect a site for naturally caused damage such as from fire, flooding or insects, to detect trespassing or theft of inventory and for other purposes.
While remote sensing has proved significantly valuable to landholders, such aerial images often contain atmospheric artifacts namely, clouds that obscure ground features. While clouds are easy to identify in an image based on their bright reflectance values, the shadows in an image that are caused by clouds are often mistaken for densely growing forests and can be difficult to detect and remove with a computer program.